Tag: Backup

FlashBack is a simple portable application whose sole purpose is to backup data from removable media (such as pen drives, memory cards, MP3 players and digital cameras). Backing up data with FlashBack is simple. Just launch this utility and select your backup location. FlashBackup will do the rest for you. FlashBack automatically backs up all removable devices connected to your computer. Not only that the next time you run FlashBack it will automatically detect any new or modified files and back them up.

By default FlashBack will copy everything it finds on your device. However, you can easily specify the file types (extensions) you want to back up by selecting any of the pre-defined extensions. Don’t worry if you couldn’t find your desired file format in the list. Adding a custom file extension is also dead simple.

There are dozens of data backup utilities (both free and paid) in the market. In fact you will be spoiled for choice. However, not everyone requires the advanced features offered by these sophisticated utilities. FlashBack is a simple USB backup device which does what it’s supposed to without unnecessarily complicating things. It’s ideal for folks who want to simply copy content from their MP3 player or Digital Camera.

We have previously mentioned a few ways to back up your Google Docs files. However, the tools and methods we mentioned previously worked for a limited number of scenarios. Gladly, there is an application now that will work for everybody.

GDocBackup is a freeware utility for Windows and Linux, that lets you backup your Google Docs to your local drive. After you have downloaded and installed GDocBackup from here, it will prompt you for your Google account details. Once you have entered your user name and password and specified a folder location, GDocBackup will download all your files from your Google Docs account.

You can also specify the formats you want to download your documents in such as downloading presentations as PDF files. After the first backup, each subsequent backup will only download the new files that have been added to you Google Docs.

With 200 Million users, Facebook has become the most popular social platform. Along with tons of wall postings and messages, people store photo albums, videos and a number of other personal things on Facebook. What if one day you wake up and everything is gone? Chances are pretty slim that something like that would happen to your Facebook data, but should you take the risk?

SocialSafe is a new web service with a solution to this problem. For a little price ($2.99), they back up all your Facebook data and store it on your local machine so you can also browse it while you are offline. It is a neat idea and one that would definitely come in handy for people who spend countless hours on Facebook.

Currently, SocialSafe only supports Facebook but they promise coverage for more networks in the future. One big feature that I think they are missing is the ability to backup all this data in the cloud because a hard drive crash is probably more common than an accidental account deletion on Facebook. Right now this is something that would have to be done by the user. Check out their video to learn more about SocialSafe.

These days many web hosting providers provide users with unlimited online storage space, so wouldn’t it be good to use some of that space for backups?

Here is a hassle free way to create encrypted backup archives of your files upload them to a FTP server from the command line.

ZIPEncryptFTP is a C# command-line program that will let you create encrypted backups of your data without having to use a GUI and upload it to a FTP server.

To backup data with ZIPEncryptFTP just run this command from your command line

ZIPEncryptFTP /directory /password /url /ftpuser /ftppassword

Running the command will compress the files and sub-folders in the folder you specify to a ZIP file, encrypt the ZIP file using AES with the password secret your prove and upload the file to the FTP server, everything is done in the memory and it does not create any temporary files.

The software allows you to backup more than one directory at a time along with several other options.

To run this program you will require to have the .Net 2.0 framework runtime.

However if you do not trust the cloud for data storage you are always better off keeping backups locally, if you have many documents on Google Docs, you can easily export them or sync them with your local documents.

The LTech Google Docs Backup provides users with an option to backup and download their documents to their local drive. You can choose between various options to backup Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations.

However this freeware will only work for Google Apps Premier and Education editions.

If you are a regular Google Docs user and Firefox, you can export your Google Documents too with a Greasemonkey script, you can find the script and other useful things in our earlier post: Getting the best out of Google Docs.

Every application that you needs stores can be customized and may also store additional data, for example Microsoft Outlook stores your emails contacts and more.

Each of these applications can be individually backed up, however creating backups for all the applications you use can be cumbersome and time consuming.

FBackup is a freeware backup software that protects your important data by backing it up automatically to any location. The backed up data can be either compressed or an exact copy of the original files.

FBackup allows users to create backup jobs to backup application data and settings, creating backup jobs is simple though a wizard, however there are also several plugins available for backing up popular applications like Google Chrome, Microsoft Outlook and so on.

Overall a really useful application that will make backups much more easier for you.

Disasters are just around the corner waiting to happen without any intimation, and due to ignorance many of us have lost enormous amounts of data and also spent lots of money to recover things we would have better off keeping backups of.

A blog or website is no different, you update it regularly and have written 1000s of articles, but what if there is a hardware crash? What if there is a problem with your server? Do you have ample backups to fall back on?

However we came across another interesting script that will allow you to backup your MySQL DB and email it to you for future use.

Backup2Mail automatically creates regular backups of your database and sends them to your mailbox on a given schedule, the script is PHP based so you can install in on any blog or website.

The author of the script also has a set of instructions to get you started, however you will need to have the ability to setup cron jobs to schedule database backups to be emailed out to you on a regular basis.

Definitely a must have script for webmasters who care about their data and want to be prepared for any unforeseen disasters lurking around the corner.

I have tweeted about 14200 times on twitter, losing that much amount of tweets can be quite a hassle, another problem is that if something goes wrong with your twitter account, you will not be able to easily find your friends and followers.

So what is the solution? Backup, remember every disaster can be averted by timely and regular backups.

Does twitter have backup solution? Yes, but none of them are provided by twitter, there are several services and tools that will allow you to backup your twitter profile, here are 5 tools and services to do that.

TweetBackup TweetBackup is a excellent free service that will backup your twitter account on a daily basis. TweetBackup uses OAuth for authentication, so you do not have to provide it with your twitter password.

BackupMyTweets BackupMyTweets will backup your tweets for free in exchange of one tweet promoting the service, you can then download your tweets in different formats such as XML, JSON or HTML. The good thing about this service is that it uses OAuth, so you do not have to share your password with them.

Tweetake (our review) Another service that you can use to backup your twitter account. You can backup your followers, friends, favorites, tweets, direct messages or everything at once. The only problem with this service is that it requires you to enter your twitter password.

TwitterBackup TwitterBackup is a java based cross platform application that will allow you to backup your tweets and export them in a xml format.

FriendBackup FriendBackup is another java based cross platform application that will let you backup your friends on twitter in csv format.

Do you use any other tools or services to backup your twitter account? Do let us know about them.

Update: Competition is now closed, we are no longer accepting entries, winners will be announced shortly

It’s time to start the 7th competition in our birthday bash series, this time we surveyed users what to give away as prizes and the most wanted item on the list was Norton Online Backup, so here is a competition that will give users a chance to win one of the 5 Norton Online Backup licenses worth $49.99 each sponsored by Symantec.

Keeping your files safe and secure is of utmost importance and backups play a significant role in securing your files from unexpected disasters.

Norton Online Backup provides users with an option to safeguard documents, photos, music & more for up to 5 home PCs, the 25 GB space they provide can be used to backup the most important file that you do not want to lose to unforeseen problems.

To participate in the competition and be the one of the 5 persons to be eligible to win a Norton Online Backup account, worth $49.99 each, you will have to use one of the following ways.

Tweet about the sponsors and about this competition, include a link to both the sponsor and the competition, if you are creating your own tweet, please include Norton Online Backup and Symantec in the tweet, also use this link http://u.nu/95ka for the sponsor and this link http://u.nu/56ka for the competition.Here is a tweet you can use to enter the competition, click on this tweet link to tweet about this contest. Once you have tweeted about it, leave a comment with a link to your status.Tweet Message (example): Norton Online Backup from Symantec provides safe and automatic backups http://u.nu/95ka win 5 Backup licenses worth $50 http://u.nu/56ka

Write a blog post linking to Symantec.com and the Norton Online Backup page and this contest in your blog post. Once you have written the blog post, leave a comment here with a link to the post.

If you do not have a twitter account, or a blog, leave a comment on why you would want to win licenses for all these softwares.

This contest will end on 11th June at 1PM EST, no entries will be accepted after this point, we will announce the winners in a blog post shortly after the contest closes.

The more you participate the more you win, we have bonus cash prizes of $100 and $50 to be given out as bonus cash prizes at the end of all the competitions, for rules about bonus cash prizes please visit Techie Buzz Birthday Bash announcement post.

Please note: tweeting or blogging about the competition in itself will not avail participation, you will have to leave a comment on this page to get an entry in the winning draw.

We once again thank our sponsors Symantec for sponsoring the prizes for this event, look forward to participation from all our readers.